Obituaries identified Michael Jackson as an icon. Stories called a certain poster of Farrah Fawcett iconic. What is an icon, pray tell? In the popular sense, icon refers to just about everything a baby boomer liked during youth and arrested adolescence. The New York Times seemingly cites icons several hundred times a day. We have had iconic burgers, iconic commercials, iconic sodas, iconic movies, iconic cartoons, iconic television series, iconic songs, iconic jingles, and on and on.

The man-child named Michael Jackson and the luminous girl known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors jumped into our consciousness at a plastic moment in American culture. Their deaths leave a generation without two of its defining figures.

She won fame as one of TV’s “Charlie’s Angels,“ but set aside fantasy girl image to tackle serious roles. Her struggle with painful cancer treatments was recorded in television documentary.